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Assessment Conclusions and Recommendations With regards to drought status, the majority of respondents indicated they were "fully recovered" from the recent drought. Only 4% indicated their utility was still in severe drought. Only 27% of Colorado municipal water providers have a drought response plan in place. It is recommended the State enhance its activities in statewide drought awareness programs to track drought conditions and disseminate information to water providers via Internet and email. Posting example drought plans on a website, a drought preparation manual, drought planning seminars, and other drought planning technical tools were mentioned as activities the State could develop and coordinate. 48% of Colorado utilities either had a water conservation plan or are in progress of developing one. The agencies who had a plan were typically larger providers. 92% of customers represented by the agencies had a conservation plan on the books. A small percentage of water providers had a budget for water conservation programs. It is recommended one way to encourage more aggressive conservation would be to rate plans on their effectiveness as measured by the reductions in water use sought in the plans and develop benchmarks for reporting water use and consumption that are uniform for all systems. One way to improve water accounting would be to adopt the International Water Association/American Water Works Association methodology for water loss accounting. Only 27% of respondents considered climate change impacts on long term water supply planning. The survey found utilities who do consider the issue are responding fairly quickly and are involved in incorporating uncertainties in long term planning. It was recommended the State should continue to make climate change information available to suppliers. In terms of needs assessments for water providers, the area of greatest need was for funding project evaluations and feasibility studies, loans for capital projects, grants for planning activities and grants for infrastructure management. Other areas of need included communicating the value of water, improving water conservation planning and other loan programs. Survey respondents expressed strong support for state involvement in providing these services to water providers as both large and small systems could benefit.